Monday, January 19, 2009

Save the Planet, Damnit tip for the day.

Stop drinking bottled water. More than 38 billion plastic water bottles are thrown away by Americans each year. They can take a thousand years to biodegrade. More than 17 million barrels of oil are burned producing bottled water in the US each year, and 2.5 million tons of greenhouse gases go into the air.

Get an aluminum SIGG bottle, fill it, and carry it around with you, instead. If you don't trust the tap, put a water filtration system in your house. You'll save money over buying the bottled stuff pretty quickly.

Practice what I preach? I bought a water bottle yesterday for the kids. They were thirsty and nagging me (because I had just bought them popcorn). It was Dasani, by Coke--which is water that actually comes from the municipal Atlanta water supply, apparently, not mountain springs. (Oh the irony.) It pained me to do it, and was the first time I had bought water in a while. We have a bunch of SIGG water bottles that we carry with us everywhere.
On the hypocrite meter (the higher number, the more hypocritical) I'd give myself a 2 out of 10.

The Save the Planet Damnit tip for the day will become a regular feature.